Reply #3: The definitive recent article on DeLay is the one by Molly Ivins [View All]

[Nothing Without Hope]

Molly really knows her Texas pols, and she's got DeLay's number BIG TIME:

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18735

Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate
03.17.05

The stench of rotting ethics

Only Tom DeLay's removal can freshen our nation's capitol

AUSTIN, Texas -- The John Wesley Hardin Died for You Society has a theme song that goes: "He wasn't really bad. He was just a victim of his times." I sometimes find this useful in trying to explain Texas political ethics to outsiders.

My theory is that few Texas pols are actual crooks, they just have an overdeveloped sense of the extenuating circumstance. Woodrow Wilson Bean once warned himself that he was skatin' close to the thin edge of ethics. After a moment, he concluded, "Woodrow Wilson Bean, ethics is for young lawyers."

(snip)

I grant you a certain resemblance to some of our more notorious standards: "Everybody does it" and "They did it first" are actually considered excuses here. But I categorically reject cultural responsibility for Tom DeLay. Real Texas politicians are neither hypocritical nor sanctimonious. A pol does what he must -- fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly -- but no pol of the Old School, when DeLay served in the Lege, would add self-righteousness to shady dealing.

(snip)

Another quality that makes DeLay an un-Texas pol is that he's mean. By and large, Texas pols are an agreeable set of less-than-perfect humans and quite often well-intentioned. As Carl Parker of Port Arthur used to observe, if you took all the fools out of the Lege, it would not be a representative body any longer. The old sense of collegiality was strong, and vindictive behavior -- punishing pols for partisan reasons -- was simply not done. But those are Tom DeLay's specialties, his trademarks. The Hammer is not only genuinely feared in Washington, he is, I'm sorry to say, hated.

(snip - much more at link)